Navraj Singh Ghaleigh has been the Lecturer in Public Law at Edinburgh since 2003. Previously a barrister in London and Lecturer at King's College London, he undertook his graduate work at the University of Cambridge, the European University Institute (Florence) and the University of California, Berkeley (Fulbright Scholar).
Navraj's research and teaching have two main strands:
Climate change law principally as a matter of public international law but addressing its relationship with other bodies of law, levels of law and disciplines. The multi-dimensional character of climate law is explored in works on the EU and its trading scheme ("Emissions trading before the European Court of Justice: market making in Luxembourg" in D Freestone & C Streck (eds.) Legal Aspects of Carbon Trading: Kyoto, Copenhagen and Beyond (Oxford UP, 2009)), climate change litigation in a wide variety of jurisdictions and levels (Six Wise Serving-Men: Climate Change Litigation as Legal Mobilization and the Utility of Typologies in 1 (2010) Climate Law 31-61), and inter-disciplinary projects (A Socio-Technical Framework for Assessing the Viability of CCS Technology, submitted to Technology Forecasting and Social Change, corresponding author, N Markusson) and technology-focussed projects (Barriers to Technology Transfer - The Chimera of IPRs in CCS, forthcoming in CCLR (2011)). See International Climate Change Law LL.M.
His work has been widely cited and reviewed in scholarly publications, the quality press, including the Times Literary Supplement and the Financial Times, and parliamentary reports. He has also advised regulatory agencies, committees, international organisations and major industry actors. Navraj is a Research Associate at the University of Zurich's e-Democracy Centre and in 2010 taught at the Duke-Geneva Institute in Transnational Law.
Navraj is also an editorial board member of Climate Law, and is that journal's book review editor. The inaugural issue of that journal draws in part from the Europa Institute funded seminar series, The EU, Climate Change and Global Governance, co-organised by Elizabeth Bomberg, Chad Damro and Navraj.
Recent/forthcoming publications include:
Politics As A Profession: Electoral Law, Parliamentary Standards and Regulating Politicians Public Law (2012), with Ben Kemp and Paul Reid, accepted for publication
The Alleged Incapacities of Mr Sheridan (2011) Edinburgh Law Review 15/2.
A Socio-Technical Framework for Assessing the Viability of CCS Technology, submitted to Technology Forecasting and Social Change, corresponding author, N Markusson
Barriers to Climate Technology Transfer - The Chimera of Intellectual Property Rights in Carbon and Climate Law Review (2011), 220-235
The Regulator: The First Decade of the Electoral Commission, in KD Ewing, Joo-Cheong Tham and J Rowbottom (eds) The Funding of Political Parties: What Next (Palgrave, 2011)
For current projects, see the tabs at the top right of this page.
Research Grants and Funding
2006-7, CHSS Small Project Grants (UoE), Holyrood Election Observatory, £5000 (PI) 2008, British Academy, Prospects for e-Democratic Politics - A UK/Japanese Research Agenda, £6720 (PI) 2008, Collaborative Research Dean's Fund (UoE), The Law of Climate Change - Exploring Post-Kyoto Options, £1000 (co-PI with Professor Alan Boyle) 2008, British Academy, The Law of Climate Change - Exploring Post-Kyoto Options, £5000 (co-PI with Professor Alan Boyle) 2008, British Council, The Law of Climate Change - Exploring Post-Kyoto Options, £1000 (co-PI with Professor Alan Boyle) 2008, Development Trust Research Fund (UoE), Scotland's National Conversation: Can Direct Democracy Be Deliberative?, £4000 (co-PI with Professor Stephen Tierney) 2009, Europa Institute Seminar Series Fund (UoE), The EU, Climate Change and Global Governance, £10000 (co-PI with Chad Damro and Elizabeth Bomberg) 2010, European Commission DG Industry, The Legal Framework on Human Rights and Environment Applicable to European Entreprises Operating Outside the EU, €140,000 (co-PI with Professor Alan Boyle)
The legal scholarship of the National Socialist and Fascist period of the 20th century and its subsequent reverberation throughout European law and legal tradition has recently become the focus of intense scholarly discussion. This volume presents theoretical, historical and legal inquiries into the legacy of National Socialism and Fascism written by a group of the leading scholars in this field. Their essays are wide-ranging, covering the reception of National Socialist and Fascist ideologies into legal scholarship; contemporary perceptions of Nazi Law in the Anglo-American world; parallels and differences among authoritarian regimes in the Third Reich, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Vichy-France; how formerly authoritarian countries have dealt with their legal antecedents; continuities and discontinuities in legal thought in private law, public law, labour law, international and European law; and the legal profession's endogenous obedience and the pains of Vergangehitsbewaltigung. The majority of the contributions were first presented at a conference at the EUI in the autumn of 2000, the others in subsequent series of seminars.
For the German Law Journal's special edition on this volume, go to http://www.germanlawjournal.com/past_issues_archive.php?show=2&volume=7
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, KD Ewing The Challenge of Party Political Funding: Comparative Perspectives (CLUEB, Universita di Bologna, 2001)
Journal Articles
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, Nils Markusson (corresponding author), et al 'A socio-technical framework for assessing the viability of carbon capture and storage technology' (2012) Technological Forecasting and Social Change 1-16
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen as a key technology to tackle climate change. The principal idea of CCS is to remove carbon from the flue gases arising from burning fuels for electricity generation or industrial applications and to store the carbon in geological forma- tions to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. Policy makers in several countries are sup- portive of the technology, but a number of uncertainties hamper its further development and deployment. The paper makes three related contributions to the literatures on socio- technical systems and technology assessment: 1) It systematically develops an interdisciplin- ary framework to assess the main uncertainties of CCS innovation. These include technical, economic, financial, political and societal issues. 2) It identifies important linkages between these uncertainties. 3) It develops qualitative and quantitative indicators for assessing these uncertainties. This framework aims to help decision making on CCS by private and public ac- tors and is designed to be applicable to a wider range of low carbon technologies. The paper is based on a systematic review of the social science literature on CCS and on insights from in- novation studies, as well as on interviews about assessment of new technologies with experts from a range of organisations and sectors.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Iterative Engagements: The EU and International Normativity' (2011) Proceedings of the American Society of International Law 572
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, David Rossati 'The spectre of carbon border-adjustment measures' (2011) Climate Law 63-84
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Barriers to Climate Technology Transfer - The Chimera of Intellectual Property Rights' (2011) Carbon and Climate Law Review 220-235
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh '“Six honest serving-men”: Climate change litigation as legal mobilization and the utility of typologies' (2010) Climate Law 31-61
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Scottish Parliament Elections 2007 – What Kind of Hackery Is This?' (2008) Edinburgh Law Review 142-149
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, Ewing, Keith David 'The Cost of Giving and Receiving: Donations to Political Parties in the United Kingdom' (2007) Election Law Journal vol. 6, no.1, pp 56-71
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Terror and the Future of Global Order' (2002) German Law Journal 3 (9)
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'German Constitutional Law and Party Political Funding: The Role of Equality' (2001) Cuadernos Constitucionales de la Catedra-Fadrique Furio Ceriol
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Funding of Political Parties in the United Kingdom: The Case for Cherry-Picking' (1999) Public Law 43
Chapters
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Regulator: the first decade of the Electoral Commission' in Keith D Ewing, Jacob Rowbottom and Joo-Cheong Tham (eds) The Funding of Political Parties: Where Now? (Routledge, 2011) 153-172
The present paper addresses the role of the UK’s Electoral Commission as regards party funding monitoring and enforcement during the historical phenomenon of New Labour. If plotted against the two axes of non-unitary/unitary and independent/affiliated, the UK’s Electoral Commission would be located firmly in the top right quadrant - it is a designedly unitary body with a series of mechanisms that preserve its independence from other institutional actors. This would suggest that the Commission, benefiting from a ‘last mover’s advantage’ and substantially immune from inter-institutional pressures, expert and well-informed, would be an exemplar in comparative terms. The experience of recent years suggests something different, or at least that there are other parts of the party finance system that require attention. Since 2005 party funding scandals have emerged with troubling regularity. Of the scandals discussed, all involve the then-governing Labour Party. It should not be inferred from this case selection that only that party was so implicated - serious funding questions arose in respect of all the major parties in this period - but those discussed herein were certainly the most damaging to the body politic, not least because they concerned the governing regime. A focus on the Electoral Commission facilitates comparisons with similar institutions in other jurisdictions, a task that the literature has yet to fully engage with. Further, given the central role the Commission occupies in the many dimensions of the UK’s party political finance, it gives an indication of the health of the broader system.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Sledgehammers and nuts?: Regulating referendums in the UK' in Simon Hug, K Gilland Lutz (eds) Financing Referendum Campaigns (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Emissions Trading Before the European Court of Justice: Market Making in Luxembourg' in David Freesone & Charlotte Streck (eds) Legal Aspects of Carbon Trading: Kyoto, Copenhagen, and beyond (OUP, 2009) 367-388
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Climate Change, the EU and Markets for Emissions' in Josep Borrell Fontelles (eds) Dilemmas in Globalization: Exploring Global Trends and Progressive Solutions (Global Progressive Forum, 2009) 207-220
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Making European Institutions Friendly To Their Citizens: Reaching the Citizens' in Uniwersytet Jagiellonski w Krakowie (eds) Jaka Unia? Jaka przyszlosc? Jaka Europa? (What kind of Union? What Kind of Future? What kind of Europe?) (Jagiellonian University, 2007)
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Donations and Public Funding under the UK's Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000-And Beyond' in Keith Ewing, Samuel Issacharoff (eds) Party Funding and Campaign Financing in International Perspective (Hart Publishing, 2006)
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'German Constitutional Law and Party Political Funding: The Role of Equality' in Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, KD Ewing (eds) The Challenge of Party Political Funding: Comparative Perspectives (CLUEB, Universita di Bologna, 2001)
Notes and Reviews
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Alleged Incapacities of Mr Sheridan' (2011) Edinburgh Law Review 15/2
This short note examines the rules on candidate disqualification that have arisen in the context on Mr Tommy Sheridan. What are the relevant rules of
electoral law, how do they apply to Mr Sheridan’s circumstances and why are they so poorly understood?
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Challenged by Carbon: the Oil Industry and Climate Change' (2010) Environmental Liability 159
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Climate Law and Developing Countries, Richardson et al (Book Review)' (2010) Journal of Environmental Law
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Beyond the Carbon Economy: Energy Law in Transition, Zillman et al (eds.)' (2009) Journal of Environmental Law 1
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Agassi v. Robinson: Caution! Intentionalism at work' (2006) British Tax Review 6
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Book Review of Barber & George (eds), "Constitutional Politics: Essays on Constitution Making, Maintenance and Change"' (2003) German Law Journal 4
This short paper inquires into the grounds on which candidates and sitting members may be disqualified from the House of Commons and also the devolved legislatures. Starting from the inaccurate reporting of the sentencing for three years imprisonment of the former MSP Tommy Sheridan, the paper argues that current law on this question is arcane and fragmented. Quite apart from its substantive merits, the UK’s regime is incompatible with the goal of citizens understanding who they can and cannot select to represent them.
Navraj Singh GhaleighBen Kemp, Paul Reid, 'Perspectives on the Wendy Alexander Affair: Electoral Law, Parliamentary Standards and the Regulation of the Profession of Politics', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2011/07 (SSRN, 2011)
This paper explores the implications of a small donation to a Scottish opposition politician who held office from September 2007 to February 2008. From these rather modest and now distant facts a number of important legal issues present themselves pertaining to the law of the funding of political parties, parliamentary self-regulation and the parallels between professional regulation and the regulation of politicians. Whilst party and campaign finance in the UK and Scotland have been the focus of some significant attention, their nexus with parliamentary standards has been rather unexplored. This engagement highlights the considerable complexity and occasional oddities of both regimes. When considered in the broader context of professional regulation standards, the regime becomes yet more questionable.
Navraj Singh GhaleighDavid Rossati, 'The Spectre of Carbon Border-Adjustment Measures', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2011/08 (SSRN, 2011)
Carbon border adjustments raise fears amongst both the community of climate/international environmental lawyers and trade lawyers. To the latter they risk taking the form of unjustifiable barriers to trade and may sit uneasily with the body of WTO law concerning trade and the environment. To the former constituency such measures are yet more difficult, both buttressing emission reduction policies and measures that are vulnerable to carbon leakage whilst raising issues for fundamental principles such as CBDR and sustainable development. This paper addresses these concerns in the context of US and EU measures, considering them in the light of WTO case law and in particular the Brazil-Tyres dispute. The US measures, contained principally in the Waxman-Markey Bill, are of interest despite their demise for the parallels that they share with the steps taken by the EU in its Climate Change Package.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh ''Six Honest Serving-Men': Climate Change Litigation as Legal Mobilization and the Utility of Typologies', School of Law Working Paper Series (SSRN, 2010)
As the legal character of approaches to climate change has increased in complexity, so the volume of litigation has burgeoned, at various levels and across a range of jurisdictions. The growth in complexity is witnessed in various forms, including the shift from the treaty lawmaking of diplomats and negotiators to that of the ordinary national (and sub-national) legislator and by the development in climate change mitigation financing of networks of private and public entities. Similarly, the causes of action are various, as are the pertinent regulatory regimes and motivations of those bringing claims. Scholarly explorations of this phenomenon have followed, focusing variously on single levels of courts, implications at particular levels, considerations for particular bodies of extant law, considerations for particular bodies of climate change law, the merits of such actions, as well as theoretical engagements with the case law within the context of approaches to various bodies of law. The approach of this article is more ecumenical. Its potential ‘dataset’ is the entirety of climate change caselaw rather than discrete themes within it and it attempts to discern patterns across the piece, to systematize the claims, and thereby create a typology to be deployed and developed in future analyses.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life: Inquiry into Party Political Finance' (2010)
Evidence submitted to the CSPL by NS Ghaleigh on 1 December 2010.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Referendums in the UK's Constitutional Experience: Written Submission of Navraj Singh Ghaleigh to the House of Lords Constitution Committee', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2010/15 (SSRN, 2010)
In early 2010, the House of Lords Constitution Committee undertook an inquiry into the UK’s constitutional experience of referendums. This short note is the evidence submitted by Ghaleigh to the Committee, drawing on previous work including the published book chapter, ‘Sledgehammers and nuts? Regulating referendums in the UK’ in S Hug & K Gilland Lutz (eds), Financing Referendum Campaigns (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). That chapter was also cited and relied upon by the Irish Joint Committee on the Constitution in its ‘Report on the Amendment of the Constitution and the Referendum’, published in April 2009. The Committee published its report ‘Referendums in the United Kingdom - Select Committee on the Constitution 12th Report 2009-10:HL Paper 99’ on 7 April 2010, referencing this submission in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, and reproducing it at pages 139-141.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Iterative Engagements: The EU and International Normativity', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2010/18 (SSRN, 2010)
The process of internalizing international norms into domestic law is a matter of contention in all polities, to varying degrees of intensity. Harold Koh’s provocative thesis of transnational norm generation - of nation state and transnational private actors blending national and international legal processes such that international norms are internalized into domestic law - is considerably less provocative in the European Union than in its country of origin. Whereas public international law can elsewhere be seen principally as a constraint on independent action, the EU has frequently deployed it as an instrument for the advancement of European integration. As such, the process of ‘translation’ is less a matter of hypothetical speculation in the European Union than a known mode of legal and political activity. Commencing with some brief stage setting, this short paper analyzes two separate bodies of international legal norms - those pertaining to anthropogenic climate change; and business and human rights - and argues that in the EU context at least, ‘translation’ is best seen as one part of a highly iterative process of dynamic relations between levels.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'A Model for Party Finance Supervision? The First Decade of the UK’s Election Commission ', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2010/19 (SSRN, 2010)
The present paper addresses the role of the UK’s Electoral Commission as regards party funding monitoring and enforcement during the historical phenomenon of New Labour. If plotted against the two axes of non-unitary/unitary and independent/affiliated, the UK’s Electoral Commission would be located firmly in the top right quadrant - it is a designedly unitary body with a series of mechanisms that preserve its independence from other institutional actors. This would suggest that the Commission, benefiting from a ‘last mover’s advantage’ and substantially immune from inter-institutional pressures, expert and well-informed, would be an exemplar in comparative terms. The experience of recent years suggests something different, or at least that there are other parts of the party finance system that require attention. Since 2005 party funding scandals have emerged with troubling regularity. Of the scandals discussed, all involve the then-governing Labour Party. It should not be inferred from this case selection that only that party was so implicated - serious funding questions arose in respect of all the major parties in this period - but those discussed herein were certainly the most damaging to the body politic, not least because they concerned the governing regime. A focus on the Electoral Commission facilitates comparisons with similar institutions in other jurisdictions, a task that the literature has yet to fully engage with. Further, given the central role the Commission occupies in the many dimensions of the UK’s party political finance, it gives an indication of the health of the broader system.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Book Review: ‘Climate Law and Developing Countries: Legal and Policy Challenges for the World Economy’', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2010/29 (SSRN, 2010)
This Working Paper is the first draft of a review of Benjamain J. Richardon, Yves le Bouthillier, Heather McLeod-Kilmurray and Stepan Wood, eds., 'Climate Law and Developing Countries: Legal and Policy Challenges for the World Economy,' Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2009,
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life: Inquiry into Party Political Finance', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2010/39 (SSRN, 2010)
Evidence of Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, Lecturer in Public Law, University of Edinburgh to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, 1 December 2010.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Emissions Trading Before the European Court of Justice: Market Making in Luxembourg', School of Law Working Paper Series, 2009/12 (SSRN, 2009)
The litigation faced by the EU ETS is of significance not only for that mechanism - the world's largest carbon market - but also for emerging carbon markets around the world and thus the enterprise of tackling global climate change by way of market mechanisms. This working paper analyses the entire EU ETS docket of the Community Courts (the ECJ and CFI) to date and seeks to categorise those cases. Themes familiar to EC lawyers prevail - especially in relation to questions of standing and admissibility - that in the light of the recently agreed Phase III EU ETS look less like narrow technical rulings than the Courts' constraining commercial and political actors from sundering legal responses to climate change.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Scottish Parliament Elections 2007 – What Kind of Hackery Is This?' (2008)
Prepared for the conference “What kind of Union, What kind of Future, what kind of Europe?” at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow) 11-14 September 2006
Papers and Presentations
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Climate Change, Statutory Duties and Ministerial Frustration' presented at A Sustainable Countryside? Regulating New Technologies for Food Farming and Ecology, Newcastle Law School, 2011
This paper considers the range of statutory duties imposed on ministers by the Climate Change Acts. These include the duty to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 (s.1); ensure that the UK's net carbon account does not exceed the budget (s.4(1)); have regard to UK domestic action (s. 15); report to parliament (s.56) etc etc.
As they regard the countryside and the farming sector in particular, what is the nature of these legal duties? An answer is attempted by reference to the existing caselaw on the enforceability of statutory duties. In addition I argue that empirical considerations ought to be addressed as they alter the Œfulfil-ability‚ of the duties. Unlike a duty to eliminate fuel poverty, achieving 80% emission reductions lies outwith government fiat as the vast majority of UK emissions issue from the private sector, not the public. Moreover the technology to achieve such reductions does not actually exist ˆ by 2050 they may have come into being but at present they are unknown unknowns. There also remains a question, currently being teased out in the renewables context, as to whether the contractual arrangements necessary for RE projects does not stifle roll-out.
The more concrete of the CCA‚s duties, I will argue, may be seen therefore as sui generis and unenforceable, raising the possibility of a future Secretary of State offering a defence similar to frustration in contract law.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The EU's ‘Second’ Climate Change Package?: Further Adventures in Marketisation' presented at Reaching International Cooperation on Climate Change Mitigation, Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, 2011
In collaboration with The Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School And The Weizmann Institute of Science.
21-23 December, 2011
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Climate Change and the Law of the WTO: Emerging Relationships' presented at International Trade and Sustainable Development, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea, 2010
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Barriers to Technology Transfer - The Chimera of Intellectual Property Rights in CCS' presented at Climate Change Governance After Copenhagen, Hong Kong University School of Law, 2010
The increasing tendency of legal specialisms to engage with climate change law is welcome. The ability to draw on the store of knowledge and expertise of other, often far more mature sub-disciplines such as human rights and trade, better enables climate law to meet the awesome tasks it is faced with. Such approaches can however assume simple 'read across-es' that fail to recognise either their own path dependencies or the specificities of climate change. Much of the IP/climate change literature falls into these traps, assuming that mitigation technologies are suffused with IP rights with the implication that analogies can be drawn between IP’s familiar territory of the pharmaceutical sector and climate change, with the aim of drawing parallels between HIV/AIDS drugs and climate change technologies for the purposes of compulsory licensing arguments. Recourse to climate change cost curves, combined with industry interviews, reveals however that there is actually startling little IP is any of the major abatement options. Even where IPRs are present, as in some forms of wind technology, they appear to be confined to relatively modest improvements to blade design or gearings. Moreover, unlike the HIV/AIDS example, there is no single climate change technology which can be the ‘silver bullet’ to the problematic. As such, the possibilities of compulsory licensing are substantially undermined. Accordingly, a detailed attention to industrial practice is necessary to properly understand the relationship between these bodies of law.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'A Watchdog of Many Minds?: Civil Society and New Technologies in Party Funding' presented at New Trends in Political Financing Regulation in Asia and Europe: The New Role of Monitoring and Enforcement Agencies, Lisbon, Portugal, 2010
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Treaty Bodies - Practice and Process of Translating International Norms into Domestic Law' presented at American Society of International Law, Washington D.C., 2010
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Climate Change After Copenhagen: The Future of the Multi-Lateral Process' presented at Political Studies Association, Edinburgh, 2010
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Copenhagen Accord and Multi-Lateralism' presented at Our Global Challenges: The Role of Civil Society After Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Playfair Library, 2010
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'IPRs and Climate Change: Pivotal or Peripheral' presented at Obtaining, protecting and using essential environmental technologies: a holistic analysis, Edinburgh, 2010
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Law and Policy of Climate Change' presented at The Business of Climate Change, University of Edinburgh, 2009
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Trust, social cohesion, citizenship and the state in an economic down turn' presented at Apeldoorn Conference, Belfast, 2009
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'A Tale of Two Chicagoans' presented at The Internet, Campaigning, and Public Participation: Lessons from the 2008 US Elections, Edinburgh, 2009
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Property Rights and Markets for Pollutions: the Case of the EU ETS' presented at Property Rights and Sustainability: The evolution of property rights to meet ecological challenges, Auckland, New Zealand, 2009
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Data, Donations and Deliberation: Mashups in Direct Democracy' presented at Referendums and Deliberative Democracy: A multi-disciplinary research workshop in constitutional law, international law, political theory and political science, Edinburgh, 2009
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Scotland’s National Conversation: Travails in Direct and Deliberative Democracy' presented at Die Welt der Direckten Demokratie, Zurich, Switzerland, 2008
Constitutional and political theorists of deliberative democracy have long argued that the mechanisms of direct democracy cannot be fully deliberative. That argument is herein examined in the context of Scotland's ongoing 'National Conversation', especially its online incarnation, leading to a referendum in 2010.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Citizenship and communities' presented at Young Apeldoorn Conference, Belfast, 2008
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The (somewhat mixed) State of the Art of e-Democracy in Scotland' presented at Hansard Society: Getting citizens back to the centre of democracy, Scottish Parliament, 2008
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The EU ETS Before the European Court of Justice' presented at Perspectives on Post-Kyoto Climate Change, University of Edinburgh, 2008
The EU’s key legislative initiative in the climate change realm has been the Emissions Trading Scheme Directive 2003/87 EC (the ‘Directive’). Establishing an EU-wide market for CO2 emissions, and operating as a key driver of the global carbon market, the Directive is arguable the most important legal instrument to have issued from the Kyoto Protocol. The legal challenges faced by the Directive are thus of significance if we are to understand the operation of the EU ETS, its future iterations and architecture. Further, analysis of the litigation will reveal the leverage that different sorts of arguments (competence, competition/state aid, violation of fundamental rights) have had before the Courts as well as the differing aspects of the Scheme that has attracted contestation.
The 40 proceedings (applications, orders, judgments) that have arisen in respect of the EU ETS before the CFI/ECJ can be categorised as below:
1. Challenging DIR 2003/87 EC 2 actions
2. Art 226 EC Infringement proceedings (for incomplete/non-transposition) 2 actions
3. Challenges to Commission Decisions on NAPs
3.1. Phase I 9 actions
3.2. Phase II 23 actions
4. Non-CO2 emission trading schemes pursuant to DIR 2001/81 EC 1 action
5. Other cases 3 actions
Quality follows quantity in this narrative. Whilst the litigation under headings 1,2,4, and 5 requires consideration, the challenges to the Commission’s decisions on National Allocation Plans are most revealing.
Phase I caselaw is substantially concerned with the respective roles of the Commission and the Member States, with the CFI defending the right of Member States’ to develop NAPs (under Art 9) and adopt a definite position (under Art 11(1)) against attempts by the Commission to assume a more dominant role for itself. The Court has further observed that the Directive does not prohibit ‘bilateral negotiations’ between Member States and the Commission over the content of a NAP in the period after its submission and prior to a Commission Decision – this then appears to be the Commission exerting pressure on individual Member States to reduce their total allowance, even where this is within the prescribed limits, so as to generate scarcity of tradable emission rights.
Phase II challenges to Commission Decisions on NAPs are dominated by applicants arguing that the Commission has exceeded its authority under Art 9(3) by unilaterally determining the total allocation for the relevant Member States (in Poland’s case a reduction of almost 27%). Again, the Commission’s attempts appear to be driven by a desire to bolster the market by achieving a scarcity of tradable rights. Member States have also argued that the Commission’s approach affect their energy security and encroaches on their right to determine their domestic energy policy.
The caselaw (much of which is pending decisions) thus appears to support criticisms made against ET schemes in general and the EU ETS in particular, that:
- trading processes do not, in and of themselves, benefit the environment, but purport to provide a means for targets to be achieved cost effectively. The Commission’s review power (Art 9(3)) have been used to reduce MS’s total allowances and so set targets – a response to the well known failings of Phase I.
- The manner of implementation has been such that key issues have been deferred into the allocation process, leading to a battle between the Commission and MS as to effective caps, with industry seeking to dilute the scheme’s impact. Not an ideal mode of regulatory control.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Governancing the Void' presented at Party Finance Workshop, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, 2008
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Holyrood 2007' presented at Microsoft Government Leaders' Forum, Scottish Parliament, 2007
An introduction to the joint Edinburgh/Geneva Universities project, Holyrood 2007 - an exploration of the ways parties, candidates and citizens use new technologies to engage in democratic politics in general, and the Scottish Parliament elections of 2007 in particular.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'E-democracy: Constitutional Theory and Practice' presented at State of the Art: e-Democracy, United Nations, Geneva, 2007
In the context of a 'curriculum building' project undertaken by UNITAR and the University of Zurich, this paper seeks to lay out the preliminary legal issues and concerns relating to e-democracy projects, in particular, those relating to the practice of constitutional law.
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Public Law and New Technologies - Reflections on 'Holyrood 2007'' presented at Society of Legal Scholars, Durham, 2007
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, KD Ewing 'Donations to Political Parties in the United Kingdom' presented at Democratic Audit of Australia: Political Finance Workshop, Canberra, 2006
Paper available at: http://arts.anu.edu.au/democraticaudit/papers/20060321_fin_ewing.pdf#search=%22ewing%20anu%20ghaleigh%22
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Viewing the Democratic Deficit Through the Prism of Contestatory Democracy' presented at What kind of Union? What kind of Future? What kind of Europe?, Krakow, 2006
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The (Non-) Case of the United Kingdom' presented at Financing Referendum Campaigns, Zurich, 2006
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Current Issues in British Party Finance' presented at Finnish Constitutional Affairs Committee (Visiting), Edinburgh, 2006
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Party Finance in the UK: the Challenge (and Opportunity) of the Internet' presented at Lecture at e-Democracy Centre, University of Geneva, 2005
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, KD Ewing 'A Statistical Analysis of Donations to Political Parties in the UK' presented at Mid-West Political Science Association, Chicago, 2005
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Scottish Constitutional Context' presented at World Legal Systems Lawyers’ Association, Edinburgh, 2005
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'An Electronic Donation Booth: Wilfull Blindness or Clear Thinking?' presented at E-Democracy and the European Union, Florence, 2003
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, Tuula Nieminen 'Removing Barriers to Innovation: the EC Trade Barriers Regulation and Constitutional Legitimation in the Global Trading Regime' presented at Innovation in Europe: Dynamics, Institutions and Values, Copenhagen, 2003
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Justifying Constitutional Review: the Case of Campaign Finance' presented at Comparative Constitutionalism, Boalt Hall School of Law, Berkeley, 2002
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Designing a Scheme for Party Funding: Lessons from the UK' presented at Westminster Foundation for Democracy Capacity Building in CEE, Budapest, 2001
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Structure and Content of Financing Politics: Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act of 2000' presented at Governance in Contemporary Europe, Centre of European Studies, Harvard University, 2001
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'The Role of Equality in German Party Funding Regulation' presented at Money Politics International, Florence, 2001
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Money and Politics in the UK - A New Scheme' presented at Money Politics International, Valencia, 2000
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh 'Schmittian Legal Concepts and European Constitutionalism' presented at Darker Legacies of Law In Europe, Florence, 2000
Grants Awarded
Awarded by EU Government for project 'ENTR Study', from 01/01/1900 to 01/01/1900
Synopsis